Wednesday, September 9, 2009

recipe: silver (pink) gin fizz

Darrell Autrey, ConcentricsIntoxicologist and Magician-at-Large,* likes making people drunk happy. Okay, happy and probably a little bit drunk. Especially if you're a friend of his, which I am, which is both terrific and terrible, gastronomically speaking. The former because he teaches his friends how to make delicious, classic cocktails, and the latter because we then drink delicious, classic cocktails all the time and get all drank & chubby.

My current cocktail obsessions all involve gin -- Bee's Knees, Aviations, French 75s, and, perhaps the most kitschy and shiny, Silver Gin Fizzes. A Silver Gin Fizz is a slightly sweet gin + citrus + soda cocktail that boasts a slight creaminess and a gorgeous foam head thanks to the inclusion of a raw egg white in the cocktail shaker -- aaaand I'm sure I just lost some of you. But it's not gross, or slimy, or egg-flavored, and I haven't caught salmonella from one yet. (Though I'm pretty sure that the first time I saw a drink made with an egg white, the part of my brain that's still stuck in college with my roommate Juliana screamed "WATCH OUT, THE DRINK HAS CHICKEN".) See, look how pretty they are:

This particular Silver Gin Fizz got its pretty-in-pink color from the blackberry-infused gin that our crafty & wondermous friend Melissa made with a bottle of mild, lovely New Amsterdam gin, about half as many/much fresh blackberries by volume, and a week or so of patience. She didn't add any sugar so the gin is tart and berrylike, which plays well with the lemon in the Fizz -- but plain ol' gin would absolutely work just as well.

1) Prepare a champagne flute (or other tall, skinny glass) by rubbing a piece of lemon peel, yellow side down, across the rim.

2) Fill a cocktail shaker halfway with ice. Measure out your gin, lemon juice, simple syrup, and egg white into the shaker. Cover the shaker, and do a little dance using the shaker as a stand-in for your handheld percussive instrument of choice. Strain the contents into the prepared glass, and gently top the mixture off with club soda. Should you happen to have fancy knife skills, garnish the foam with a curl of lemon peel.

3) Get drank in style!

*Due to irreconcilable differences with their Midtown landlord, Concentrics has temporarily closed Trois (Darrell's most recent bartending ground) pending the discovery of a new location. If you're visiting a different Concentrics location in the meanwhile and find a bartender in a bow tie, ask him for something fabulous and tip him just as fabulously!

2 comments:

All cocktails made with egg white are the best thing ever of all time, and I am VERY sad that Trois is on hiatus. However, I j'adore your blog and am not at all sad vis-a-vis that.Cheers,SusanThe Frugal Hostess

Silver fizzes are the only egg-white-involving cocktails I know... I'm gonna have to expand my catalogue. Terrible, back-breaking work! Never fear, I will take this heavy responsibility upon myself, selflessly.

the grammar monkey is

I laugh a lot, haven't been asked to wear a foam rubber lobster suit at a rheumatology convention in nearly five years, and think the world would be radder if I could use plasma grenades to end unpleasant conversations.